


No Other Eyes Like Yours

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Chatango Secret Santa 2012, M/M, Pan told me., actually no, i am a stalking stalker who stalks, i stalk your tumblr, so this is how i came across this little gem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 18:50:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the center of the round chamber lay a shattered table, a massive slab of polished black stone broken in six different great shards that had toppled towards the center. Once upon a time, this had been a great, revered castle. Now it was nothing but cold ruins and distant whispered legends. It made the hair on the back of his neck and along his arms stand on end. This place was reeking with power just waiting to be unleashed—some sort of crawling creeping magic that tasted by ozone and burnt sugar on his tongue. </p>
<p>Charles was very still at his side, eyes half-lidded and dark as he let the waves of magic crash against him, like tall angry waves against a rock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Other Eyes Like Yours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yaegaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yaegaki/gifts).



> Yae, I hope you like this! I took the idea from your tumblr and ran with it. I love you <333 Merry Christmas!

The heavy stone door shuddered, and even though there was no sound to accompany it, Erik could tell by the vibrations that something very big and very pissed off was slamming repeatedly against it. The wouldn’t hold forever. 

Erik turned around and examined the stone vault they had sealed themselves into. It had a high regal ceiling of arching stone, like an ancient cathedral, and in its distant apex a small dot of blue could be seen—the far-away sky, well over their heads. 

At the center of the round chamber lay a shattered table, a massive slab of polished black stone broken in six different great shards that had toppled towards the center. Once upon a time, this had been a great, revered castle. Now it was nothing but cold ruins and distant whispered legends. It made the hair on the back of his neck and along his arms stand on end. This place was reeking with power just waiting to be unleashed—some sort of crawling creeping magic that tasted by ozone and burnt sugar on his tongue. 

Charles was very still at his side, eyes half-lidded and dark as he let the waves of magic crash against him, like tall angry waves against a rock. 

Erik let him be for the moment, and turned instead to Raven, gesturing up towards the distant blue dot. 

“Can you break through that?” 

Raven looked wearily up, and finally shook her head. “I don’t have enough space to turn here. I’d crush my wings.”

Erik dragged a hand roughly down his face. 

“Minotaur,” Charles said thoughtfully, staring at the shuddering door. “I thought they were extinct. How fascinating—how utterly riveting. This might just be the last one of its kinds, my friends. We are so very privileged—“

Charles kept talking, but Erik tuned him out. Charles was always talking, nearly always of inconsequential shit he knew no one cared about, especially when he was nervous or concerned. Erik let his smooth accented voice roll over him soothingly as he traveled the circumference of the room, trailing his hand along the walls, looking for a hidden exit, a tunnel, a doorway, even a spot where the rock was weakest and they could break through it. He could feel his sword hum at his hip, nearly vibrating with the urge to do violence to an enemy, to someone threatening him—threatening Charles. 

Nothing. The stoned were set as closely together as though not a thin piece of parchment was ever meant to slide between them, and they were massive blocks of stone, nearly as tall as Erik himself. There would be no nudging them out of place, not without some heavy-duty magic. 

Erik licked his dry lips briefly and stalked back to where Charles was standing looking idly around, probably admiring the architecture. When Erik approach, the mage turned to him, and Erik stopped in his tracks, shocked. 

The magic swirling in the air, running like ferrous blood through veins of stone, was crackling like electricity around Charles. His eyes had gone from black-on-blue to –blue-on-silver—something they never did unless Charles was abusing the deepest of his magic, using his own life essence. 

Erik felt Raven inch closer to his side, weary of this all-powerful Charles, this odd foreign creatures with eyes like quicksilver. Her senses were probably telling her to run as far away as quickly as possible. Erik’s own senses were telling him that and he was only human. He glanced down at where she was gripping the fabric of his shirt. The delicate blue scales along her forearm had risen uneasily. 

The stench of ozone in the air was nearly overpowering. Erik cleared his throat to try and dislodge the scent of it crawling down his windpipe like molasses. 

“We have to get him out of here,” Raven mumbled, voice rough through elongating fangs. 

“Don’t shift,” muttered Erik. “You don’t want to startle him.” 

“That’s very insulting, my friend,” chided Charles, silver eyes amused. “I’ll have you know I;m perfectly in control.” 

“Your eyes are wrong,” Raven pointed out. 

“I’m afraid that’s an involuntary reaction,” Charles closed his eyes and swayed slightly in the powerful magic currents, like a bird riding a gust of wind. 

“This tastes like lightning,” said Erik, staling forward to lean into Charles’ alien eyes. “You told me once you can use yourself like a—a rod, a—“

“Lightning rod, yes,” Charles nodded. “But this is old magic, thick like tar and just as dark. I can let it flow through me as it pleases, but controlling it, commanding it—this is a sentient, living thing, Erik. It will do exactly as it damn well pleases.” 

Erik straightened and glanced at the door. The smooth stone moorings of the double doors were beginning to crack. Soon enough the Minotaur would break through. In a small, confined place like this Erik would have very little room to do battle. In such close quarters magic would be impossible, with the risk of hitting an ally almost as good of those of hitting the foe. They were sitting ducks. 

“Can you—is there any way, any way at all, that you could control it?”

Charles stared at him with those eyes painted silver-blue, cheeks flushed pink and lips cherry red. 

“Yes,” he said slowly, eyes unfocused, moving with the pulse of magic in an almost serpentine way, as though his spine was rippling with pleasure. Erik felt heat clawing up his back, searching tendrils of arousal all too easily finding purchase in Erik’s lungs, suddenly heaving with labored breath. All through it Charles held his eyes, filled with amusement like flecks of light. 

“But it demands a price,” he continued. 

Erik stiffened. “What kind of price?”

“Oh,” Charles murmured, eyes growing half-lidded. The air was suddenly very difficult to breathe, charged with swelling power like a wave about to crash into a city and demolish it. Raven clutched at Erik’s wrist painfully. “It’s nothing too bad by half, my friend, if you’re willing to help me through it afterwards.”

“Absolutely,” said Erik emphatically, because there was little—nothing—that he wouldn’t do for Charles, to keep Charles safe—to keep Charles close. He was well beyond the point in which he could claim he did not know exactly what he felt for Charles. Very much well past that point. 

“Very well,” Charles said placidly, and he looked almost drugged as he turned to the wall opposite the doors, and the air around him crackled like brittle twigs snapping underfoot. Erik twisted his wrist away from Raven’s hand and caught her forearm in a vice grip of his own, pulling her in close. He opened his mouth to say something, but just then the doors fractured loudly behind them. Erik and Raven froze. 

Erik steeled himself, pulling his concerns and his emotions deep into himself and down into the deepest part of him to lock away. Once he felt cold and detached, he loosened his hold on Raven’s forearm and turned around to face the door. He drew his sword, felt it hum with thirst in his hand, a living wanting thing anxious for blood, for victory. 

“Change as soon as the wall breaks down,” he said calmly. “Take Charles and go.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Raven hissed, words mangled through teeth already elongating into nightmares. “We’re not leaving you here—“

The fracture in the stone doors began to spiderweb outwards. Soon enough, they’d collapse. Erik gathered his magic like fog around the center of his being and threw it down his arm into the sword, watched the edge of the blade glow blue with power. 

“Now, my friends,” Charles said, voice soft as a bird’s wing. “No need for the dramatics.”

Erik turned to look at him over his shoulder just as the room grew dark—the sky above them clogged suddenly with dark clouds. Erik’s scalp prickled as all the hairs in his body stood on end.

A moment of startling darkness, and then blinding light and a noise so loud Erik’s teeth ached. Something struck him in the shoulder, bringing on a sudden wash of pain that left him breathless, disoriented. He flinched and curled in on himself, throwing an arm over his head, but nothing else struck him, because he was abruptly encased in warm, dry leather, and he found himself almost crushed by an unexplainable force—he was trapped between Raven’s wings and her body, he realized. Raven had shifted and cocooned her wings around them to shield Erik’s more fragile body as she took the brunt of the falling stones. 

“Charles!” he shouted, trying to shift—impossible, she was holding him too tight. The heat was stifling here against her body, building up against the thick leather of her vast wings. He felt like he might catch fire. Sweat was beading his forehead already, running down his neck. “Raven, get Charles!”

A deafening roar. Erik thought Raven was finally listening, but then he realized that wasn’t her usual roar of anger. With a snap of horror he realized that the lightning Charles had called down had, indeed, collapsed the chamber—alongside, most likely, the door. 

The minotaur was in the chamber. 

With a powerful, jarring movement, Raven’s wings unfurled and snapped open into the now open air above them. Erik stumbled away from her chest and fell to his knees. A new struck of lightning made his vision white-out, and the minotaur roared again, this time in pain. Charles was battling the beast with borrowed magic. Erik pushed himself to his feet and called his fallen sword to him. The blade came to his hand immediately, alive with magic and the urge to destroy. Erik managed to stand and get his bearings at last. 

Charles was standing on what was left of the outer chamber wall, a dark thin figure against the overcast grey sky. The silver-grey cloak of the mages swirled around him like smoke, caught in a wind all of Charles’ own, ruffling his dark hair around his apple-red cheeks and lips. His eyes were blue-on-silver and narrowed in thought. Erik could feel the magic coiling around him, a buzz like a thousand bees. Ozone and burnt sugar coated Erik’s throat, thick on the top of his tongue like a layer of tar. 

The minotaur was standing on its bull legs, leaning forward cradling his ruined right arm, laid open to the bone by lightning. The torn muscles and sinew dragged slickly on the ground. Erik felt the compression of air as Raven brought her right wing down brutally, long wicked talon raking down along the minotaur’s back. The beast roared and swiveled around—for all intents unharmed, but obviously pissed off. 

Erik gritted his teeth and emptied his magic into his sword. The blade hummed in joy and fractured out into seven twin razor-thin blades, moving in unison like a choir or church voices. They plunged into the minotaur all from different direction and came flying out, blood-coated, out the other side of the creature. That should have been enough to kill anything, but impossibly, the minotaur only swayed. 

“It’s immortal,” Charles said tightly. “Can’t be killed.” 

“We can try,” growled Raven, plunging forward to sink her double row of fangs into the beast’s shoulder and shake him savagely back and forth with her powerful, long neck. Erik threw himself to the side, away from them, and ran to Charles. The static electricity swirling around the mage made his lungs heave in uncomfortable breaths, but he reached him and caught his cloak. 

“Are you certain?” he asked. 

“The magic tells me,” Charles nodded. 

“But you said it’s the last of its kind, surely other have been killed before, there must be a way.”

Charles shook his head, silver eyes cold. “He’s the last one. The world won’t let it die.”

“The world can go hang itself,” growled Erik, dragging Charles closer and putting himself between the dragon and minotaur and the mage. 

With a long, drawn-out roar, Raven whipped her long tail out and threw the minotaur out through the door back out into the great hall. Erik turned around and threw his arms around Charles, just in time for Raven’s long wicked claws to close around his sides as she threw herself through the demolished wall and out into the open air, clutching at them as she beat her powerful wings. 

Charles yelled something, but Erik wasn’t listening, too busy holding onto him—too tight, too tight by half, he could be crushing him—Charles’ body was fragile, no matter the insane amounts of magic he could command at the whimsical flick of a wrist—and there was pain, so much pain like a white shower across his senses, eating over everything else like acid, like poison. But Erik didn’t let go. Letting go was letting Charles fall, and Erik didn’t let go. 

An indeterminate amount of time later, Raven carefully maneuvered herself into a three-legged landing and deposited them gently on the ground. 

“Erik!” Charles struggled out of his grasp and rolled him on his back on the grass of the field, anxious hands patting his sides. Erik flinched. 

Raven shifted back into humanoid form and kneeled next to Erik, hands hovering helplessly. 

“Oh gods, Charles, do something, fix him!”

Charles took in a deep breath, and when his eyes opened against, they were tainted sliver-blue. “Raven, go to the village, get us supplies and food. We’ll be spending the night here in the forest.”

“Alright, yes,” said Raven, eager to help, and shifted immediately back into her dragon form, beating her long leathery wings anxiously. “But can you fix him?”

“Yes, yes, of course, now go,” said Charles, laying his hands gently on Erik’s shoulders, soothing. Raven obeyed, immediately leaping into the sky. Erik, dazed, watched her go with blurry eyes. 

“Now breathe, darling,” Charles murmured, sliding his hands down to Erik’s sides where Raven’s claws has stabbed him. 

Dizzily, Erik dragged his eyes down to Charles’ face, to his blue-on-silver eyes, to his red-red lips and flushed pink cheeks, down the long pale line of his neck to his surprisingly broad shoulders, long arms, to the way his long spidery fingers splayed out on the linen of Erik’s rough white shirt. 

The dizziness of pain began to recede slowly, and his eyes became focused again. His sides felt heated and tense where Charles was healing him, slowly, slowly, for Charles wasn’t particularly gifted at healing. Elemental magic, status magic—those were Charles’ fortes. But he got the job done, because once Charles decided something needed to be done, the Universe couldn’t knock him off his track. 

Finally, finally, the pain faded, and Erik was left lying stretched out in the grass, panting and feeling brittle as centuries-old bone. Charles, kneeling beside him, slid his hands to rest idly on Erik’s stomach above the shirt, as he leaned in closer, looking relieved. 

“I still had some residue of elder magic in me,” he smiled. “Otherwise that might have taken much longer.”

“Good thing I wasn’t poisoned,” Erik rasped. 

Charles scowled. “I’ll get the hang of that, thank you.”

“Eventually,” said Erik. “What the sky is green and the grass is blue.” 

Charles laughed, loud and long, falling forward to press his forehead against Erik’s shoulder. Erik realized it was the magic in him, still playing his emotions fast and high, the thrill of battle and the pleasure of healing, the adrenalin of danger. Charles sat up and he had never looked to alive, his red lips, red cheeks, eyes black-on-blue, and that was what made him do it, his eyes back to normal, and this was Charles. 

Erik arched his shoulders up off the grass and caught Charles’ mouth in a wet, biting kiss, caught his bottom lip and licked it, mouthed at him until his lips parted. 

Charles fisted his hand on the hair at the back of Erik’s head, keeping him close as he angled his head to deepen the kiss, as he threw a leg over Erik and straddled him. Erik pushed up to a sitting position, drugged on the kiss, too addicted now to let their lips break apart. 

“What is this?” he panted into Charles’ mouth as the mage unclasped their capes. 

“The elder magic,” Charles mumbled. “It wants to live. Feel alive. Feel something.”

Erik stiffened. “Then—this—“

“It’s me,” Charles shook his head vehemently. “It’s me, I want this, I want you. I’ve wanted you so long, Erik, please, I need—the magic—“

“Yes, alright,” gasped Erik, and crushed Charles close so he could roll them and trap him under his body on the grass. He got his knees and hands under him and hovered over the mage, straightened up to yank away his shirt. He felt heated and heady, crazed with need. Charles sat up slightly to get his hands on Erik’s breeches, and then had to stop when Erik shoved him back down to unbutton his jacket and push it off his shoulders to get started on his shirt. 

Charles’ blush, fresh and full on his cheeks, went all the way down to his chest, down the center of his sternum between his pale pink nipples. Erik had always wondered. 

“What do you need?” he asked against the pale skin of Charles’ throat, as he shifted to lay his weight on the mage, his thigh between Charles’. He could feel his erection nestled in the angle of his hip and thigh, and it was glorious. 

Charles squirmed in the grass, hips making abortive little thrusts up against Erik’s thigh, hands clutching Erik’s biceps. 

“I need—the magic wants—oh, it wants you, do something, anything , _please_ ,”

Erik let his hips grind down, pressing himself into Charles as he mouthed at his jaw, licked his way back up to his mouth. With some maneuvering he managed to get Charles’ breeches and his own open, and then take them both in hand. Charles bucked up, eyes flying open, painted silver-blue again as the magic still in him raced through his veins. Erik didn’t falter. He knew what the magic wanted, but he knew what Charles wanted, too, and if they coincided, well—he wasn’t about to complain. 

It didn’t take very long, adrenalin and magic and the heady joy of being alive clawing at them. 

Afterwards, they lay on the grass, and Erik draped himself over Charles’ side and pillowed his head on Charles’ shoulder, pressing his hand flat against the wild beat of Charles’ heart. 

Charles sighed. “How marvelous,” he murmured, staring lazily up at the odd wandering cloud. “We got to see the last remaining minotaur, is it not fascinating? How blessed we are, my friend, a once-in-a-lifetime experience—“

“Yes,” drawled Erik. “Special, that’s how I feel. Blessed. That’s exactly the word I would use. Hm.”

Charles slapped the back of Erik’s hand where it lay upon his chest, but then he left his hand there covering it, so there was really no sting. They stayed like that for a long time, the sweat cooling on their skin, drifting peacefully. 

“Wait,” Erik lifted his head. “I have supplies. Why did you send Raven away?”

Charles cleared his throat. 

“Gods,” Erik said slowly, grinning. “You sent her away so you could fuck me?” 

“The magic wanted,” Charles protested, looking rueful. “And I didn’t _fuck_ you, now did I?”

“Not yet,” admitted Erik, pushing up. “The day’s young. She won’t be back for hours. There might still be some magic you know, we better make sure it gets what it wants. I’m concerned for your health, Charles. Really I am.”

“Yes,” sighed Charles as Erik yanked his boots off. “I’m sure that’s precisely your motivation.”


End file.
